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Richard Stallman Talks On Copyright Vs. the People
holden writes "Richard M. Stallman recently gave a talk entitled Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club. The talk looks at the origin of copyright, and how it has evolved over time from something that originally served the benefit of the people to a tool used against them. In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the talk and QA are available in ogg theora only."
I thought there was no such thing as a stupid question? In any case, Stallman's response was no way to win supporters.
I know Red Hat et. al. But as far as I can recall, Stallman didn't talk about them much (not that he was supposed to - he was there to talk about copyright, but one would have thought he brought them up during the questions.)
I would never go so far to say that he's unsuccessful. He thinks he's successful, and that's all that matters. He told me that he's achieved the same as the rich: he has a more money than he needs, and that gives him a lot of freedom. No, he's not a failure at all. But he's not the first person I'd choose as the emissary of "free software."
What do you do? The economics of free software interests me.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
From the point of view of humanity as a whole, and considering how many people die or are born each day, I'm not sure a murder matters that much compared to the problems caused to so many people by closed source software...
I'm sorry, but there are no circumstances in which I'd consider a death, of anyone, less important than some software.
Closed source software is insecure and costs money? Well whoopee-fuck. That's hardly a real "problem", or real suffering, compared to many of the other problems humanity faces. Certainly, how in christing fuck does some software licensing compare to feelings of loss or grief caused by someone's death? As someone who has been through that, your bullshit arguing that "oh well software is more important because it affects more people" is just beyond the pale to me.
God, I wish there was a nice little term for all the people who consider computers/the Internet/software more valuable than life. Like the people who think there should be a death penalty for spamming. It's something I see all too often.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --